Japanese Views of the Second Sino-Japanese War--

Through the Lens of the Nanjing Massacre and Events Connected with It

This chapter surveys some of the issues connected with the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931-1945 in some views or 1937-1945 in others) in postwar Japan. In other words we examine the various ways Japanese have looked at this war in recent decades and what the major issues have been. This war was long and brutal, and it encompassed a wide range of activities. Perhaps because of the war's complexity, one event has come to the forefront in historical debates as typical or representative of the war as a whole. This event is known by such names as "The Nanjing Massacre" (Nankin [dai]gyakusatsu 南京[大]虐殺), "The Rape of Nanjing" (Nankin bōkō 南京暴行 or Nankin gōkan 南京強姦), or the Nanjing Incident (Nanjin jiken 南京事件). In Japanese publications seeking to deny or greatly minimize this event, a word like "so-called" (iwayuru 所謂) is often placed in front of one of these names. Some seeking to link the event rhetorically or structurally with the more widely-known Holocaust in Europe during the Second World War use the term "Nanjing Holocaust."

In terms of time and place, the Nanjing Massacre took place in and around the Guomindang capital of Nanjing, starting with the fall of the city on December 13, 1937 and continuing for five to six weeks thereafter. In some views, it started as early as November and lasted into January. The Nanjing Massacre was characterized by a high degree of lawlessness in general, with Japanese soldiers committing crimes such as looting, murder, and rape on a large scale. Frank Gibney describes it in part as follows:

For several months--from November through January--and throughout the area of the Japanese advance, its inhabitants--civilians and disarmed prisoners-of-war alike--were raped, tortured, and indiscriminately slaughtered by soldiers who were themselves brutalized by their superiors and released to vent their rage on a helpless population. Living off the country, dirty, hungry, and still smarting from losses sustained in their action against Chinese regulars in Shanghai, Japanese troops behaved like a huge armed mob bent on revenge. ("Editor's Introduction" in Honda Katsuichi, The Nanjing Massacre: A Japanese Journalist Confronts Japan's National Shame [M.E. Sharpe, 1999], p. vii)

The number of victims is a hotly disputed topic, with estimates ranging form a few thousand to over 300,000. Also in dispute is the extent to which the Nanjing Massace was the result of random acts of lawlessness by Japanese soldiers running amok on a large scale or whether it was in whole or in part the result of policy decisions by the Japanese commanders in China and carried out by the soldiers in and around Nanjing.

Web Sites

Here are some of the many web sites devoted to this event. First are sites presenting the Nanjing Massacre as a gruesome atrocity and crime on a vast scale, most of which are the work of Chinese or Chinese-American scholars or journalists:

Here are sites critical of the views presented above in general and especially of Iris Chang:

Here are sites in Japanese that affirm the Nanjing Massacre as an atrocity (there are not many):

Here are sites in Japanese that deny the Nanjing Massacre or severely limit its scope:

Background: Some Basic Issues and Problems

The study of history is rarely pursued in "ivory tower" isolation as a disinterested inquiry into the past. Even historians who would wish that their work remain comfortably in the realm of dispassionate academic analysis often find that at least some of their readers want to take interpretations of the past and use them in the service of present-day political agendas. Furthermore, one result of the legacy of modern nationalism (a complex topic; click here for details)--under whose influence we all live--is that we tend to think in terms of essentialized groups of people based on national boundaries. In this modern way of thinking, "the Japanese" "the Chinese," "the French," and so forth each have some sort of essential national character, which is reflected in culture, institutions, and, of course, history. In this way of thinking, the historical record often becomes something like a scorecard in a game of comparative national characters. And professional historians are not the only ones in the business of keeping score. In the case of the Nanjing Massacre, especially, journalists and popular writers have often been the frontrunners in the major debates.

My pointing out this reality of history-as-political-rhetoric in the contemporary world, is not the same as defending or celebrating it. My stylistic bias favors a cool, academic manner of historical inquiry, conducted with care and acknowledging areas of ambiguity. Furthermore, I reject the view of history as being a record of a people's national essence, and, indeed, I reject the very idea of national essences. Ideally, historical accounts would acknowledge the immense complexity of events like the Nanjing Massacre and display a healthy respect for the limits of our ability to make definitive statements. However, an awareness of complexity and a degree of epistemological humility should never become crutches on which we lean to avoid telling or hearing an unpleasant story. The human experience is filled with brutality, and we must face unsettling facts head on if we hope to make progress in ameliorating this brutality in the future.

Nothing is gained by taking the easy way out and ignoring what we would rather not see. And one of the most common psychological crutches on which we often lean is to imagine that "we" (i.e., members of our group, nation, whatever) would never behave cruelly or brutally, especially en masse and in the context of official state-sponsored activities. As John Dower and many others have pointed out, in warfare, we tend to see atrocities committed by our side as rare, individual reactions to the stress of battle. We tend to see atrocities committed by the enemy, on the other hand, as systematic and indicative of a beastly nature. In looking at powerful events of the past such as the Nanjing Massacre, these wartime biases tend to arise even in people of later generations with no direct, personal connection to the original war.

We tend to be selective about the events we allow to arouse our passions. In the United States, for example, the American Civil War remains a powerful and emotional event for many, especially in the Eastern states (where most of the fighting took place). Likewise, the Second World War often carries a similar emotional charge, especially in the Western states. It would be rare if not impossible, however, to find an American for whom the First World War packed an emotional punch. There are, of course, good reasons for these differences in emotional charge. Events closer to "home" in all senses--temporally, geographically, culturally, in terms of political influence, etc--stir up our emotions to a higher degree than more distant ones.

For twentieth century Japan, the Pacific War was the defining event, and it remains so even now in the first years of the  twenty-first century. It was "the" war. The impact on China of the second Sino-Japanese War (which includes the Pacific War) was also pivotal, though it was followed by several decades of civil war and political upheaval. It is only in recent decades, therefore, that historical issues such as the Nanjing Massacre have become objects of popular interest in China independent of state-sponsored efforts to mould political awareness. In Japan during the immediate postwar years, the U.S. occupation forces imposed censorship in ways that discouraged deep and systematic examination of the Pacific War. The first two postwar decades were a time when the focus of popular energies was on material matters: first economic recovery and then economic growth and prosperity. Gibney explains the situation during the 1960s and 1970s:

Protected by America's Cold war umbrella and basking in the sunny world of its surging GNP, the Japanese public turned its attention in the sixties and seventies to economic subjects. The hardships of World War II receded into the past, and for the younger generation, especially, the earlier Fifteen Year War, so-called, with China from 1931 to 1945, was a dead issue.

Indeed, as far as the war was concerned, most Japanese, mindful of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, logically thought of themselves as the principal victims. A conservative nationalist government and an even more conservative Education Ministry saw to it that the record of Japan's rape, pillage, and murder in China and Southeast Asia was neatly swept under the postwar rug. ("Editor's Introduction" in Honda Katsuichi, The Nanjing Massacre, p. ix.)

It was not until the 1970s that conditions in Japan had become conducive to a serious debate about issues connected with the Second Sino-Japanese/Pacific War. The Nanjing Massacre was unknown to the general public in Japan at the time it took place. Though it was one of the matters taken up in the Tokyo war crimes trials, the general public paid little attention to the details of these trials and tended to regard them as exercises in victors' "justice," that is, acts of political revenge. It was not until 1967 that a substantial account of the Nanjing Massacre was published in Japan. In that year, historian Hora Tomio 洞富雄 (1906-2000), published a lengthy chapter on the "Nanjing Incident" in his book Kindai senshi no nazo 近代戦史の謎 (Puzzles in modern military history). The book was aimed not so much at professional historians as amateur history buffs. In any case, it generated little attention at the time.

It would be several years later, around the end of 1971, that serious, intense, and sustained debate over the Nanjing Massacre began, led by the Journalist Honda Katsuichi 本多勝一. In 1971, Honda spend forty days in China interviewing victims and witnesses of Japanese aggression during the second Sino-Japanese War. Much of his material dealt with Nanjing, and Honda's riveting accounts were published in the Asahi newspaper from August through December of that year. In 1972, he published the reports from his China trip in two books, Chūgoku no nihongun 中国の日本軍 (The Japanese military in China) and Chūgoku no tabi 中国の旅 (Journey through China). The latter book became a bestseller. Honda's work and writings forced the general public in Japan to take a look at the Nanjing Massacre and, through it, the more general matter of wartime behavior and ethics. Hora and Honda were the first major figures in Japan to paint a picture of Japanese not simply as victims of the war but also as victimizers.

Such writing was disturbing to say the least, and, not surprisingly, it generated opposition. At one extreme was Tanaka Masaaki 田中正明 (1911-), who denied there was a Nanjing Massacre. Tanaka, a writer who has spent the entire second half of the twentieth century working to absolve Japan of any wrongdoing during the Pacific War, argued that the whole thing was contrived as part of the Tokyo war crimes trials to discredit Japan. Other prominent members of what is often called the "denial school" (hiteiha 否定派) include Jōchi University professor Watanabe Shōichi 渡部昇一, prize-winning writer Suzuki Akira 鈴木明 (1929-), and Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintarō 石原慎太郎.

Honda's most sophisticated opponent was Yamamoto Shichibei (1921-91), who often wrote under the pseudonym Isaiah Ben-Dasan and frequently quoted from Hebrew scriptures. Unlike Tanaka, Watanabe, and the other "denial school" members, Yamamoto did not deny that the event happened, nor did he defend Japan's wartime leaders. But he criticized Honda and the Asahi newspaper for alleged hypocrisy and criticized the notion that all Japanese in some way bear responsibility for events like the Nanjing Massacre. Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi explains Yamamoto's views and strategy as follows:

"Ben-Dasan" drew on a rich store of Judeo-Christian knowledge and values to attack Honda and the Asahi for culture-bound hypocrisy. They preached that "all 100 million Japanese must repent" by saying gomen nasai or "forgive me" to the Chinese. The cabinet of Higashikuni Naruhiko used this same rationale to shift responsibility for losing the war from the emperor state to the Japanese people back in September 1945. Through this bogus logic, Japanese absolved themselves of guilt by saying that everyone shared it. The Asahi was compounding its wartime sins through this clever feint--exactly the opposite of what Honda claimed to be doing. According to Ben-Dasan, Japanese mothers scolded their children for not saying gomen nasai or sumimasen as the stock obligatory condition to be pardoned; this was not a true admission of guilt. By Judeo-Christian standards, Honda and the Asahi must do three things. First, they had to back up their words with deeds to make sure Japan never again embraced militarism or pursued imperialism. Second, having accused "A" and "B" of war crimes, they had a responsibility those men so that justice could be done. Third, the rank-and-file who committed such atrocities did not go to China willingly; they were ordered to fight and die there. As the Chinese said, they too were victims of Japanese militarism. So Honda and the Asahi must indict those at the top, those ultimately responsible. In this sly way, Ben-Dasan dared Honda and the Asahi to call Hirohito a war criminal in public. ("The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75," The Journal of Japanese Studies, 26:2 [Summer 2000], p. 316.)

Honda and Ben-Dasan/Yamamoto engaged in several public exchanges of criticisms and rebuttals in the early 1970s. Spurred by these debates among (mainly) journalists and popular writers, professional historians began to enter the fray. The early 1970s was a pivotal time for Japan, which initiated rapprochement with China in 1972, a process that eventually led to a formal peace treaty and full diplomatic relations toward the end of the decade. As part of that process, Japan's leaders expressed various degrees of official "regret" for Chinese suffering during the war. These pro forma utterances tended to please nobody--Chinese commentators and Japanese critics like Honda said they lacked sincerity, while members of the denial school denounced any official apology, no matter how perfunctory. In this broader political and diplomatic context of the early 1970s, debates over events like the Nanjing Massacre took on a greater significance.

Throughout the 1970s, more articles and books began to appear about the Nanjing Massacre or Japanese military actions in China more generally. The strong emotional import of this topic, as well as its political significance, prompted these writers to seek out more evidence and to hone their analytical and rhetorical skills. One result has been a vast increase in available sources connected with the Nanjing Massacre. Particularly valuable are accounts written by various Westerners in Nanjing at the time. In the early 1980s, Honda returned to China and traveled the same course that Japanese armies had moved from their landing at Hangzhou to their capture if Nanjing, all the while interviewing survivors and witnesses. His work featured detailed diagrams of what happened when, photographs of many of the relevant people and places, and the addition of outside, corroborating accounts. Also in the 1980s, an increasing number aging former soldiers began to go public with their personal accounts of ignoble deeds while serving in China.

Interestingly, the government of China showed no strong interest in investigating the Nanjing Massacre or similar smaller-scale events from the war years. Gibney explains this official reluctance:

One would think that the government of China would have continuously investigated the matter and made the strongest kind of representations to Tokyo. But the Communist Party leadership, from Mao Zedong down to Jiang Zemin, has used the facts of Nanjing rather fitfully--never letting recrimination or disclosure interfere with its Japanese policy of the day. At some points in the past, Beijing even put a damper on local commemorations of the Massacre. One cannot help thinking that an organization with so much blood on its hands--going back well beyond the Tiananmen Massacre to the millions starved, tortured, and killed in the famines and the ideological persecutions (Anti-Rightist campaign, Great Leap Forward, Great Cultural Revolution, etc.) of Mao Zedong's long governance--is not overly eager to discuss other people's massacres. ("Editor's Introduction" in Honda Katsuichi, The Nanjing Massacre, p. xiv.)

As a result, it was not until the 1980s that serious work on the Massacre among scholars in China began on a large scale. In the Untied States, the Nanjing Massacre was "discovered" only in the 1990s:

If the Rape of Nanjing was rediscovered in Japan in the 1970s and in China a decade later, the same process unmistakably reached the United States in the 1990s For decades, while many English-Language works on World War II would mention the Rape of Nanjing in passing, only a handful of them described it in great detail, almost none by academic historians. Such seeming neglect in mainstream English publications of Chinese suffering during the war in general and that in Nanjing in particular has produced a new wave of works in recent years, mostly by Chinese Americans alarmed by the frequency of a new wave of denials of the massacre in Japan. (Daqing Yang, "Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing," American Historical Review, 104:3 [June, 1999], pp. 847-848)

The most influential of the works by Chinese Americans that Yang mentions was journalist Iris Chang's 1997 best seller, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. This book served several useful purposes, the most obvious of which was educational. Many general readers in the United States became aware of the Nanjing Massacre for the first time as a result of the book. Furthermore, Chang's investigations led to the discovery of an important new source, the diary of the German businessman John Rabe (available in English as The Good Man of Nanking [Knopf, 1998]). Unfortunately, Chang's book is also full of errors and exaggerations. Many of these errors were the apparent result of sloppiness and do not--or should not--damn the book as a whole. Others, such as Chang's uncritical use of extremely high figures when quantifying the number of victims, are more serious. One reason is that the question of numbers is perhaps the greatest point of dispute among Japanese historians, and Chang's careless use of high numbers played into the hands of those Japanese out to discredit her project. My own view is that the total numbers are not so important--if only 100,000 Chinese were slaughtered instead of 250,000 is the massacre any less of an atrocity? Still, anyone writing a book in this subject is obliged to address the question of numbers in a rigorous way. The many errors and exaggerations in Chang's book are terribly unfortunate because they provide good leverage for those who seek to undermine her whole argument.

Because Chang's book was read widely by an American audience, it enflamed the anger of those Japanese in the denial school like nothing else. For example, Tanaka Masaaki's publisher, Sekai Shuppan, translated one of his recent books into English as What Really Happened in Nanking: The Refutation of a Common Myth (2000). In the introduction, Tanaka says, "I urge American researchers, politicians, scholars, journalists, and opinion leaders to read [this book]. Once they have, I am convinced that they will arrive at the realization that violations of international law of the magnitude alleged by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking (more than 300,000 murders and 80,000 rapes) never took place." (pp. 5-6.) Notice the words "of the magnitude." Because so much evidence of such high quality has come to light since the early 1970s, it is now impossible even for "deniers" like Tanaka to claim that nothing at all improper happened. Instead, the rhetorical approach is to minimize greatly the  numbers of victims and scale of the "so-called Nanjing Massacre" such that whatever killings and other crimes did take place could be accounted for by such factors as a few rogue troops affected by the stress of the battlefield--unfortunate but hardly worthy of being called a "massacre," "rape" or whatever. Tanaka's publisher did not simply translate his book and offer if for sale, it sent free copies to all the members of the Association for Asian Studies, the major scholarly organization for Asian Studies in the United States. Numerous other members of the denial school--or perhaps we should now call it something like the "greatly minimizing school"--have set up web sites or published articles attacking Chang's book and pointing out errors in it.

Even though the Japanese deniers and minimizes of the Nanjing Massacre make much noise and have some sympathizers in high places, the majority of Japanese historians acknowledge the event as a large-scale atrocity. And recent work by Kasahara Tokushi 笠原十九司 and others continues to advance our academic knowledge of the Nanjing Massacre and its significance, while also reaching out to the general Japanese reading public. When Justice Minister Nagano Shigeto 永野茂門 publicly denied the Nanjing Massacre in 1985, public outrage and official protests quickly forced him out of office.

The Nanjing Massacre and smaller-scale events like it raise troubling issues about human behavior at its worst, and it is understandable that many in Japan would tend to shy away from a close examination of it. But many Japanese scholars have risen to the challenge of confronting these difficult issues. As a result, our understanding of the Nanjing Massacre and related events continues to evolve. For example, one incident often cited by Honda and other early researchers as symbolic of the massacre as a whole--an alleged 100-man killing contest between two Japanese officers--we now know almost certainly did not happen. (See Wakabayashi, "The Nanking 100-Man Killing Contest Debate: War Guilt Amid Fabricated Illusions, 1971-75," The Journal of Japanese Studies, 26:2 [Summer 2000], pp. 307-340.) While this particular finding might be encouraging to the members of the denial faction, the sheer quantity, wide variety and  high quality of evidence available today that attests to the massacre makes it more difficult than ever for anyone with intellectual integrity to dismiss or minimize it.

This page is part of www.east-asian-history.net. If you arrived here via a web search or an external link, click the icon at left to go to the home page or click this link to go to the index page for the textbooks: www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/.